Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on the show today is Kathleen Porter McGee. Kathleen is the superintendent of

partnership schools, which is a network of nine urban Catholic schools, seven in Harlem and the

South Bronx, and two in Cleveland. In a recent piece for City Journal, entitled Learning to Thrive,

Kathleen discusses all things Catholic schools, including their recent enrollment declines,

their performance during the COVID-19 pandemic relative to other parts of the educational system,

and the steps these schools can take to succeed

in the post-pandemic era, which we are hopefully entering.

Kathleen, thanks very much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

So let's start by looking at the two trends that you explore in your City Journal piece.

On the one hand, you have the performance of Catholic schools during the pandemic, which compares,

as you know, quite favorably with other schools. Twice as many private school parents as public

school parents said they were very satisfied

with their schools in a recent survey.

The vast majority of families who transferred to Catholic schools last year,

say they planned to stay in them in 2021.

And 92% I think is the number of Catholic schools remained open or were open for full-time

in-person instruction or at least hybrid learning at the beginning of 2021.

Yet on the other hand, as has recently been reported, Catholic schools experienced their largest

enrollment decline in 50 years last year,

I think down almost 7% year over year. So what explains this, you know, this discordance or this

...